An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 46: Sorry, I Think You’re Confusing Me With a Different Pharaoh (The Forgiver (al-Ghafir))

The Forgiver (al-Ghafir) 1-85
Sorry, I Think You’re Confusing Me With a Different Pharaoh.

Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0

For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com

The Forgiver (al-Ghafir) 1-20

“The day when they will emerge [from their graves], nothing about them will be hidden from Allah. ‘To whom does the sovereignty belong today?’ ‘To Allah, the One, the All-paramount!’”

The first few verses of each surah tend to be a series of praises of Allah, often mingled with how the Qur’an is a “manifest warning” or similar kind of sentiment. Which is fair enough, it’s a formula that lets the reader or listener know what the intent is. It suddenly occurred to me with the verse listing various epiphets for Allah - “forgiver of sins and acceptor of repentance, severe in retribution, [yet] all-bountiful, there is no god except Him, [and] toward Him is the destination” that this reminded me of the accumulation of titles by Daenarys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, but also specifically of King Robert’s dismissal of them when dictating – “..titles, titles etc.”.

The rest of this block is familiar territory about rewards and punishments according to one’s faith – this seems to be the singularly most important criterion, that one sincerely believes and submits to God; works and deeds are not mentioned. Also notable here is that the text very clearly indicates that this division between heaven and hell will only occur on the Last Day, when the dead emerge from their graves. So until then, the dead are simply dead, I would guess.

There’s also a brief mention of Noah and previous prophets being ignored in the past, but I did like the verse “Every nation attempted to lay hands on their apostle, and disputed erroneously to refute the truth. Then I seized them; so how was My retribution?!” Because not only did I like the double punctuation at the end there, but also “How’s My Retribution?” Is God asking for feedback? The flaming boulders falling from the sky have a label “How’s My Retribution? Call 1-800-ALLAH”?

I am so heading for an eternal burning.

The Forgiver 21-40

“And Pharaoh said, ‘Let me slay Moses, and let him invoke his Lord. Indeed I fear that he will change your religion, or bring forth corruption in the land.’”

A bit of Moses’ story now, with Moses coming before Pharaoh and Pharaoh threatening to kill him. Moses is defended by “a man of faith from Pharaoh’s clan, who concealed his faith”, a monotheistic Egyptian I guess, who has a discussion with Pharaoh about “a day of mutual distress calls” and also tells him that “Joseph brought you manifest proofs earlier, but you continued to remain in doubt concerning what he had brought you”. Now, according to Exodus there are hundreds of years between Joseph and Moses; it’s not the same Pharaoh in both stories. Is the mystery “man of faith” using some kind of protocol whereby each Pharaoh is considered a reincarnation of the previous one and thus they are all the same person? Or did somebody make a mistake with the chronology?

Possibly it’s the latter because then the Pharaoh seems to think he’s in the Tower of Babel story because he commands “Pharaoh said, ‘O Hāmān! Build me a tower so that I may reach the routes—the routes of the heavens— and take a look at the God of Moses”, for which he is “led into ruin”.

The Forgiver 41-60

“So be patient! Allah’s promise is indeed true. And plead for [Allah’s] forgiveness for your sin, and celebrate the praise of your Lord morning and evening.”

Pharaoh’s people are consigned to the Fire for disbelieving, and this is used as a springboard to warn on non-belief in general. There’s really not a whole lot of meat to this argument, it reads a little like a more burny version of Pascal’s Wager. If you don’t believe in God, He will burn you. Although the burning is not so agonising that those consigned to the Fire can’t squabble between themselves -

“When they argue in the Fire, the weak will say to those who were arrogant, ‘Indeed we used to follow you; so will you avail us against any portion of the Fire?’”; I imagine Laurel and Hardy – “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into”.

There’s also the handy assertion about how you are wrong to disagree - “Indeed those who dispute the signs of Allah without any authority that may have come to them —there is only vanity in their breasts, which they will never satisfy”. Well of course. Remember that if you have doubts. And also remember the verse quoted at the top of this section – God does things in His own time so temporally dispersed events can be conveniently linked together. That bad thing that just happened to you was because of something bad you did ten years ago, see?

The Forgiving 61-85

“It is Allah who made the night for you, that you may rest in it, and the day to provide visibility. Indeed Allah is gracious to mankind, but most people do not give thanks.”

There are two common Qur’anic message contained in this last batch of verses. One is that there have been previous Apostles and those that didn’t listen were punished. Something that occurred to me is with all the earlier apostles; Noah, Lot etc., the punishment comes pretty directly with floods or rains of burning stone. And yet, for some reason, God no longer does that but has decided to wait until the Last Day and then punish people’s souls in a magical place of fire and scalding water. Funny that.

The other theme is “Things exist, therefore God” argument, which covers again things like night, day, cattle and ships. The obsession with ships being evidence for God is an odd one; at least all the other things that get mentioned are naturally occurring and this apparently inexplicable, but ships are self-evidently human-made artefacts. And if it’s the knowledge of ships, why just ships and not other items (although I recall that armour was mentioned previously).

There’s a big verse that discusses the human life from conception to death -“It is He who created you from dust, then from a drop of [seminal] fluid, then from a clinging mass, then He brings you forth as infants, then [He nourishes you] so that you may come of age, then that you may become aged —though there are some of you who die earlier— and that you may complete a specified term, and so that you may apply reason”. I’ve been over the seminal fluid and clotted mass stuff before; I like the little get-out clause about the time and circumstances of death, where it feels like the verse suddenly realises that not everyone lives to old age and then backpedals to redefine it as “a specified term”. Which means that God designed it from your conception that you would be die at the age of 17 in a road traffic accident or at age 3 from an infectious disease that He’d also created.

And of course, where it says “so that you may apply reason” there is an unspoken caveat that excludes looking too hard at religious claims using your reason.

That, it must be said, was a pretty tedious chapter full of the same old arguments and assertions, and disappointingly no new angles. I think it shows that it’s a relatively early to middling chapter chronologically since the arguments given are a bit weak and not properly consolidated.